Name: Mohit Kataria (left) and Gururaj Potnis School: IIM Calcutta Year of Graduation: 2003 Business venture: Manthan Services (KPO) HQ: Bangalore, Karnataka

They didn't bag the highest dollar-offers this placement season, yet Satyajit Sadanand, a student of IIM-L who decided to go back home to Baroda and turn his football club, Providence, into what accountants would call a going concern, and Sarath Babu, a student of IIM-A who turned down an offer from a software company and the annual salary of Rs 8.5 lakh that went with it to start a catering business (including a canteen on campus), have made more headlines (and inside pages) than those that did. The phenomenon of IIM grads jumping onto the entrepreneurial bandwagon shouldn't surprise anyone. India is a nation of entrepreneurs, and the IIMs, goes one school of thought, prepare an individual to be an entrepreneur (another school of thought says that all they do is to give people enough perspective to be independent directors on the boards of companies). Yet, it isn't easy to opt out of the placements process, and just-shy-of-seven-figures Indian salaries or six-figure dollar ones. "Very few students want to take risks at the beginning of their career and we teach them to go and learn the business in some established set-up before becoming entrepreneurs," says Sushil Kumar, a professor of Agri-business at IIM-L, explaining why few students opt to be entrepreneurs.

Deciding To Jump In

The IIMs, everyone knows, do not create entrepreneurs. No one minds (except the schools themselves on occasion; for instance, to redress this seeming lacuna, IIM-B founded a Centre of Entrepreneurship which was funded by Infosys' former Joint Managing Director N.S. Raghavan) because they create fine managers, probably the best of their kind in India. Most people who become entrepreneurs soon after finishing the two-year course at the IIMs were probably keen on doing so even before they secured admission to the schools. For instance, Mohit Kataria and Gururaj Potnis of IIM-C's Class of 2003-the duo co-founded Manthan Services, a KPO or knowledge process outsourcing firm-were keen on "doing something of their own" even when they were students at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. "The atmosphere at IIT was very entrepreneurial," recalls Potnis, "but I did not have the skill sets to start an enterprise." Both made it to IIM-C, and revived their plans, but by the end of 2002 (during which they had prospected in Delhi and Bangalore), were no clearer. "We decided to play it safe and sit for placements," admits Potnis. They didn't: in early 2003, they met with brothers Anshuman and Rishi Das, IIT, Delhi and Rourkee alumni, respectively, and founded Erasmic Consulting, an 'in-sourcing' firm that helps multinationals put down offshore centres in India. The duo moved out six months later to found Manthan.

Name: Vardan and Ankita Kabra School: IIM Ahmedabad Year of Graduation: 2004 Business venture: Fountainhead (a pre-school) HQ: Surat, Gujarat	Name: Abhijit Chaudhuri School: IIM Lucknow Year of Graduation: 2003 Business venture: GATE Forum (a coaching institute) HQ: Bangalore, Karnataka

The story of Vardan Kabra is not very different. The Class of 2004 student from IIM-A was certain that he wanted to do his own thing when he was a student at IIT, Bombay. "I realised that I lacked business acumen," he says, proffering a reason for his decision to opt for a PGDBM from IIM-A. Kabra and his wife Ankita, also a student of IIM-A's Class of 2004, run a pre-school in Surat. Indeed, it would appear that entrepreneurs are wired differently: Abhijit Chaudhuri, a Class of 2003 student from IIM-L, insists that even when he was a young boy, "I wanted to do something different." "I would often discuss becoming an entrepreneur (when I was at Ranchi's National Institute of Foundry and Forge Technology)," he adds. Chaudhuri runs gate Forum, a company that helps students prepare for the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (for admission to post graduate programmes at the IITs).

Every year, at the better business schools in the country, the graduating batch boasts several individuals who have entrepreneurial dreams. "There were 11 of us," recalls Ankita Kabra, of the informal group that would meet and discuss how they would become entrepreneurs after completing the course, "and our ideas ranged from launching a bookstore to starting an educational institution to even venturing into distribution". By February of 2004, though, placement season at IIM-A, things had changed. "Our group of 11 was down to three," says Arvind Kumar, also from the Class of 2004 at IIM-A (Kumar runs a small packaging firm called Easypack Solutions near Mumbai).

Name: Vikash Choraria School: IIM Lucknow Year of Graduation: 2005 Business venture: Value King (a distribution venture) HQ: Kolkata, West Bengal

What's The Big Idea?

Potnis and Kataria are in the fairly-established (and lucrative) area of KPO. "We aim to be market leaders in the legal outsourcing space," says Kataria, who claims Manthan, which started with a team of 25, now employs 250. That can be said of several other entrepreneurs from the IIMs as well. However, a significant number do opt to try something new or unexpected (at least for someone from an IIM). Chaudhuri's gate Forum is the first of its kind; "We are India's only firm offering this kind of preparatory tools for gate aspirants," says Chaudhuri. One wouldn't expect to find a pre-school being run by a couple of IIM-A grads, although it must be said that the Kabras, who are working towards launching a primary school, may be onto a good thing. "There is a lot of potential in the education space in cities such as Surat and we want to tap it," says Kabra. Nor would one expect to find an IIM-L graduate running a distribution venture. Vikash Choraria, from the Class of 2005, does just that with Value King, a company that seeks to deliver products (all kinds from perishables to personal care products to consumer durables) and services (think dry-cleaning, travel assistance, even car-washes) at the doorstep of customers, and at prices that are lower than prevailing market ones.

Name: Arvind Kumar School: IIM Ahmedabad Year of Graduation: 2004 Business venture: Easypack Solutions (a packaging firm) HQ: Vasai (near Mumbai), Maharashtra

If one were to look at these ventures objectively (this is, after all, a business magazine), some look good, others reasonably good, and not-so-scalable, and still others... (well, let's leave it at that, shall we?). Arvind Kumar says he hit upon the packaging idea in desperation as he was "running out of time". "My margins are high," he adds, but admits that "I use pretty elementary technology and can, therefore, operate only at the local level." It is likely that some of the ventures featured on these pages will fold up, as indeed most first entrepreneurial initiatives do. The very fact that they have been through an IIM, however, gives these entrepreneurs a safety net; industry should snap them up, failed attempt at being an entrepreneur and all (some companies may actually consider this experience worth paying a premium for). At the peak of the dotcom boom, Lokendra Tomar, a Class of 2000 student from IIM-L founded coolavenues.com, a community site targeted at B-school students and aspirant-MBAs. It floundered but had managed to survive, building a significant brand salience among MBAs. Tomar, however, had no difficulty in finding a job and is currently Vice President (Delivery Knowledge Services), Integreon. Says Santrupt Mishra, VP, Aditya Birla Group, "As long as one can justify his decision first not to partake in the placement process and then wrap his enterprise up and take up a full-time job, any employer would be happy to have him on board." That's the beauty of being an IIM-entrepreneur. Even if your company doesn't really take off, you end up a winner. Twice over.